Launch Jacking – Does it really work and is it a sustainable business model?
If you’ve been trying to make money with affiliate marketing than you must have heard about launch jacking. Some marketers consider this strategy as the “Holy Grail” of internet marketing, while others despise it and wouldn’t turn to it even if you held them at gunpoint.
I find myself somewhere in between, let’s say I have a Love/Hate relationship with the method. In this post we’ll take a closer look at the method and see if it’s really worth your time and effort.
The strategy has been around us for many years and there are literally hundreds of products about this topic. Still we see several new training courses coming out every month preaching it’s the next best thing since sliced bread. All these products are plunged into the market by shady vendors that keep rehashing the same concept.
Launch Jacking is all about creating product review videos and trying to rank them on video sharing sites such as YouTube. It’s basically a kind of search engine optimization that siphons traffic from a high authority video site which may convert into some occasional sales.
Watch The Video Below And Find Out What I Think About Launch Jacking
As nowadays every affiliate and his grandmother jump on the launch jacking train you might be wondering if it really works. The answer is – yes, it does.
For example, let’s assume that this week a product called “The Super-Duper Affiliate System” is going to be released. If you stick with the launch jacking guidelines, you’ll make a video with a title like, “The Super-Duper Affiliate System Review + Exclusive Bonus Bundle”.
Your bonuses will determine if your campaign becomes a winner or a total failure. You’ll need to craft some unique bonuses that are exclusive to you and won’t be offered by any other affiliates. Don’t be a fool and pile up a bunch of old resell rights products from 10 years ago and give your bonus package an estimated value of $15,879.84.
If you want some more info on how to create your unique bonuses, then you might want to check out this post.
Once you’ve finished recording your video, you’ll need to upload it to YouTube, optimize your video description and build some back-links that’ll help to get your video ranked.
The competition for this keyword will be very low because it’s a brand new product. As a result you’ll have a pretty good chance of showing up on the first page of Google and YouTube when people search for a review of the product. Potential buyers usually start searching for reviews when a product is first released and there’s a lot of hype and frenzy over it.
If they find your video and click on your affiliate link, there’s a possibility that they may buy the product and you’ll be rewarded with an affiliate commission.
That’s how it works. But is it the best strategy for the long term?
No it isn’t and that’s exactly why a lot of marketers hate this strategy. Most online marketing products that are hyped up, often burst on to scene with all the bells and whistles. Unfortunately, that hype only last for a couple of days or maybe a week, if your lucky. When the launch period is over, hardly anybody searches for these products after that.
So, building a passive business in the long run with this launch jacking model isn’t entirely possible since you’ll need to keep making videos for new products. And herein lies another problem, finding good quality products to promote on a daily basis is near impossible.
Most product launches in the make money online niche are either shiny objects or push button software’s. These things never worked for anyone before and they will not work for anyone in the future. If you solely rely on launch jacking, you will be forced to promote crappy products if you want to maintain a steady income stream. This is not a ‘set and forget’ type of business model.
Your best option would be to build a list from your YouTube videos by directing your traffic to a landing page first. You might lose out on a couple of sales, but at least you’ll be building a list of people that you can market to in the future. By doing so, you could turn those ‘short term videos’ into a long-term business.
There are also some affiliate marketing networks such as Warrior Plus and JVZoo that allow affiliates to add buyers to their list. This works via the affiliate bonus delivery option. You will have to re-direct the buyer to an opt-in box first before they are able to access your bonuses. Once these buyers are on your list you can build a relationship with them.
To wrap things up, while launch jacking does work it isn’t the best idea to structure your whole business around it. It would be wise to complement it with other marketing methods such as niche blogs, CPA marketing or product creation. If you truly want to succeed in this business you’ll need a long-term plan.
Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. The launch jacking commissions can be a nice head-start for new marketers but you really need to broaden your horizon. Many newbies get stuck here and never venture further.
The smart ones use it as a starting point and move on to far greater things. Don’t be the one stuck in a dead-end street, be smart.
